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Soul Food Junkies

To many African Americans, soul food is a part of cultural identity. But does this cuisine do more harm to health than it soothes the soul?

Series

Independent Lens

Premiere Date

January 14, 2013

Length

60 minutes

Funding Initiative

Open Call

Series and Special Projects

Awardlaurels-rCreated with Sketch.

2012 Urbanworld Film Festival-Best Documentary

Awardlaurels-rCreated with Sketch.

2012 American Black Film Festival -CNN Best Documentary Award

Producer/Director

Byron Hurt

Byron Hurt is the New York-based producer of the award-winning documentary and underground classic I Am A Man: Black Masculinity in America and Moving Memories: The Black Senior Video Yearbook. Hurt is a former Northeastern University football star and long-time gender violence prevention educator. For more than five years, he was the associate…Show moredirector and founding member of the Mentors in Violence Prevention program, the leading college-based rape and domestic violence prevention initiative for professional athletics. He is also the former associate director of the first gender violence prevention program in the United States Marine Corps. In 1999, Hurt was the recipient of the Echoing Green Public Service Fellowship, an award given to ambitious young activists devoted to creating social change in their communities. Over the past decade, he has lectured at more than 100 college campuses and trained thousands of young men and women on issues related to gender, race, sex, violence, music, and visual media. Show less

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The Film

Filmmaker Byron Hurt explores the upsides and downsides of soul food, a quintessential American cuisine. Soul Food Junkies explores the history and social significance of soul food to black cultural identity and its effect on African American health, good and bad. Soul food will also be used as the lens to investigate the dark side of the food industry and the growing food justice movement that has been born in its wake.